Anger Management
Let's Help You Deal with Your Anger at its Earlier Stages
The good news is that Anger is an emotion and everyone has a right to all of our emotions. The challenge is that all of our emotions have related actions urges—sadness can lead to crying, fear or shame can lead to hiding, etc.—and it’s the behaviors that anger often urges us to do that get us into trouble.
HOW I CAN HELP
I am a specialist in Anger Management, and I break our work down into 4 main categories:
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Identifying Triggers: Building awareness around what triggers us is a first step towards making appropriate changes to our responses when we get triggered.
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Identifying “Yellow Flags”: Warning signs let us know when we are revving up and need to take a break from whatever the current disagreement is. Yellow flags could be physical—chest or shoulders tightening, clenching hands, shortness of breath, etc.; emotional—feelings of anger or hopelessness; or cognitive—contemptuous thoughts, urges to control verbally, etc. These flags let us know we need to take a break from the disagreement and get ourselves back to physical, mental and emotional baseline.
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Finding adjustments to make our communication more effective. We may think we are justified or have a right to “let them have it” verbally, but when our emotions take over, we stop thinking of the most effective way for others to actually hear us. We get angry because our needs are not being met, and by getting others to hear us more effectively, we increase our chances of getting what we want.
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Building structure that supports our relationships: This broad element can mean anything from, “Tuesday evenings after a long day of work and a few drinks over dinner will not be when we talk about finances,” to “when either of us says we need a break from a disagreement, that we will honor that need as clearly as when two boxers hear the bell ring and return to neutral corners.”
Weekly Anger Management Group
Thursdays at 6pm
An engaging approach that reinforces concepts with the core understanding that you are not alone in struggling with anger.